These Latter Days

These days
I can listen to a song
and not like it for itself

(whatever that means — 
for the totality, the wash
of what it is and how it sounds)

but still enjoy it for how
its rhythm guitar snakes around
and under keyboards or how

the drummer’s a touch
behind the beat or what that vocalist’s 
surprising choices do

to amplify the meaning
or meanings if it’s 
“one of those songs

with more than one;” I can dig
its parts while not digging
the whole wrapped package.

This is how it’s been
for years now — digging 
treasures out of dirt

or soil if you prefer; it’s rarely
for joy in the song or singer
that I sit back now and close my eyes.

That is in fact how I take all my joy
in these latter days;
in clumps, in pieces, not as a whole.

It does not lessen
my joy that this is true;
rather, it concentrates my savoring

of what I have dug free
from the world, what
I have unearthed. 

If you see me with my eyes closed 
before the beauty of some ocean
at sunset, please let me be. 

I am here in the now, here to be swept up
in the sound of daylight leaving
with no promise of another day.